This is a piece I wrote back in 2009 during the early stages of taking a shamanic healing course with the eminent, Dr. Bradford Keeney. All quotations are from Brad. I've been meaning to share this for some time. I hope you enjoy :)

“You’re becoming familiar with the teacheryou’ve been waiting all your life to meet –your body. Let your body take you for a ride!”Bradford Keeney

This weekend I experienced the second workshop of my Shamanic Healing course at ITM (The Institute of Traditional Medicine) taught by the visionary and professed American shaman, Bradford Keeney. For those of you who have heard me talk of Brad or, even more fortunate, to see me soon after the first workshop, you already know how powerful an influence his teachings have had on my life. He’s an absurd anarchist; absurd because we live in such absurd times (America is bombing democracy into Iraq?!) that one must use the absurd or, to use the Native American lexicon, the contrary way, expressing oppositions to counter the repressive consensus and shed light on its own shadow that often never gets airplay, collapsing the absolutism that our punitive politicians wield their truths with. All this defiant logic is expressed to shock people and wake ‘em up to ideas that are far on the fringe, in the obscure lands of arising consciousness. As Brad replied to someone’s desperate inquiry ‘What are we supposed to do in this world that is falling apart?’ : ‘We’re supposed to be fucking pissed off!!!’ he answered, vehemently. For the most part we’re benumbed at best. Thus, awakening becomes a huge part of the game; awakening people from these often manipulated and coerced states of apathy and ignorance (why do u think governments doctor our water with fluoride and spray our skies with noxious chemicals, not to mention the electronic pollution of cell phone use, microwaves, and GMO foods that lack most if not all essential minerals?). For too many, we are dead before we die, and I don’t mean in the esoteric, alchemical sense of dying to create the new, ‘golden’ self. We’re being quietly massacred by poisons, physical, mental and spiritual, and we need to get mad if we want to return dignity, authenticity and integrity to our lives. No one is going to clean this world up, recreate and revise it except awakened, willful human beings. Those that control our world are counting on the cynical state of the majority and are doing their best to forward this vacuity so that things continue as they are: an exhausted, demoralized populace obsessed with vain, futile ambitions and, in the end, ultimately driven towards a purpose in life that encapsulates pleasure-seeking, egoic desires and individual glory, all at the expense of community and even family. We’re more interested in hiding in our homes than taking to the outside to manifest the true world that our essentia self yearns for; a yearning that is symptomatic in the populace as the epidemic of depression which is the modern day plague (though much more of a subtle and sinister killer; a slow sucking out of the marrow of life). There is also a massive existential nausea, spiritual restlessness and crises that have gripped so many of us, turning us into hungry seekers, gulping so many new age, mystical, spiritual books that we rarely go deep enough into one tradition to find any real solace or enlightenment (and all traditions are indeed the paths to authenticity we seek but only if followed with diligence). As a spiritual teacher informed a gasping class I attended a few weekends ago: “All I see is seekers. I’m looking for someone who wishes to be a finder!”

“The holy like to have fun!”

What Brad teaches is one of the most powerful modalities I have experienced: shaking medicine. Shaking medicine is not just a technique but is implicit with a potent vision of the world based on the views of what he refers to as the First People; the Kalahari Bushmen of Africa. But even though shaking may have begun in Africa, the cradle of humanity, it has spread to many other First Peoples or indigenous cultures such as the ancient samurai of Japan, popping up in the modern age in gospel and shaker churches across North America. To shake is one thing, but to shake with Brad is another, because he really embodies the contrary way. He’s an unparalleled awakener, with an inspired balance of brilliant intellectualism (he has a PhD in psychotherapy and studies cybernetics as a hobby) and mystical wildness, effortlessly drawing all into an exploration of the most fundamental supposed truths that our materialist societies are based upon and then, helps us set the dynamite in the appropriate places before (and with the most fiery laughter) giving us matches to light the fuses and bring it all down. Destruction is inherent in his work for as he declares we must make space to create a new world based no longer on hesitation and talk of impossibilities but engaging the potent power of the imagination, and the realm of infinite possibilities that belongs to all spiritual, or creatively expressive individuals. Shaking is relatively simple as a concept, yet profound as an experience. The individual, or group, merely begins to shake their body, being sure to move as spontaneously as possible, sanctioning the body as leader, not the mind. I found that at the beginning inhibition is the biggest roadblock. Bradford made us all testify from the outset that ‘you’ve got to be bold enough to make a fool of yourself if you want holy spirit to come down and shake you’. The esoteric result of shaking is quite obvious: it facilitates the movement of the lifeforce, qi, prana etc. that is constantly flowing through and within our body via an intricate system of channels. For most of us, this energy has become stagnant, stuck, blocked or welled up in various areas of the body, owing in large part to our sedentary lives (physically, mentally and spiritually sedentary that is) in a modern civilization that prides itself on emotional restraint and docile demeanour. Shaking confronts all of our social conditioning, and invites us to become untamed and remember our origin as primal beings.

“The Big Love. That’s the guide. Follow what is most expressive about the Big Love. No methods work. Just have the courage to make a fool of your self to help get the self out of the way.”

After a few minutes of shaking, I generally feel a massive release of my body’s tension and enjoy a much smoother flow of blood and qi, as my energy starts to amplify. This is where things get wild: according to the teachings, by simply shaking, we do facilitate the vital energy within us to move again BUT we don’t just want to move it, we want to be shaken by spirit, we want the big fucking bliss, to be bludgeoned by the great oblivion of our true being and melted by mystery into the GREAT MYSTERY. This is done by shaking the voice: singing wildly and freely, spontaneously whatever comes. Many find this a worthy challenge because we are conditioned in our society to put a cap on letting things out, but once the cap is off holy dang does it all start to pour out. I find it easy just to dive into the foolishness of it all by playing with the most ridiculous sounds right off the bat, soaring to falsettos I can never hope to reach and bass notes that have me howling demonically, all in the vein of just pushing my limits and denuding all of my shame. By singing, we magnetize our throat chakra, which begins to pull the vital energy that wells up in our power centre just at our navel. We don’t want to remain just in power, for power is only a step to the highest power: love. By singing, we pull the lifeforce up into the heart and once it’s there, ecstasy explodes. This is generally when people blow a load not out but within; a spiritual ejaculation; a wet, celestial dream as the heaven and earth big bang within us. Music is a healthy companion, whatever kind really puts you to your limits. I’ve shaken many times however without music so I don’t find it necessary. In fact, I find music can sometimes be limiting as it nails us into the linear world where songs begin and end at a preordained time (and often we KNOW when a song will end, which can have a deadly influence on our spontaneity). The shaman is known as the song-catcher, as sound travels in the ether (the finer substance within the air upon which thought, energy, radio and light rays travel on) and can be absorbed at any time. Sound never dies either so in effect any song that is sung just floats around in the atmosphere. This may explain why tunes suddenly float into our heads. So alone, give yourself up to the idea. Start humming something rhythmic and you may be surprised to be all of a sudden chanting, howling or singing the inner melody of your deepest depths. Amazingly cathartic and mystifying. When I did this on a Six Nations reserve after a sweat lodge, I danced for almost an hour, half of which was in rain, and made a peace treaty with the spirit of Water, who I’ve been deathly afraid of since a child.

“It’s more than love. It’s about loving love!”

When one is shaking, the sky is not the limit: the known and unknown universe is. It’s challenging to explain what can occur, but it is deeply transformative. After my first shaking sessions with Bradford, I lost almost all inhibitions, but not in a lunatic kind of dancing naked in the streets way. I simply found myself emboldened, willing to express myself more earnestly, creatively and consistently. Yes, I now dance in the streets while listening to my favourite tunes on MP3 player with total abandon (I love the looks I get), I hug and kiss trees sometimes talking with them for upwards to twenty minutes and I often do qi gong postures on the subway, and by goddess, do I enjoy it so much in public spaces. Spirit has no bounds. If you feel it, free it. We should not be afraid of unleashing our inner nature because, as the Taoists, the ancient Chinese sages passionately professed time and time again, human nature is good! And the more you give yourself to your deepest desires (ever deepening), the more you apprehend that this is true and it is not a matter of faith. Fuck faith. Find out for yourself. What we all need now is the passion to explore and express this beautiful nature RELENTLESSLY, DAILY AND FOR AS LONG AS WE LIVE. That is the true passion of Christ (Christ being not the dude but the state that all humans can attain once they have become fully realized in love and truth): human nature is a wonderful, beautiful, divine current so let it out, shake it out, and let it shine for all the world to see. What I continually come to during my shakings (and this is probably the only constant revelation because each experience is so dynamically different) is that once I shake for a sustained period (although sometimes it happens in the blink of an eye, or the Eye) I come to a point when I understand that this lifeforce, qi, prana, that is everywhere and makes up everything that is the universe, is a giant-mother-shining love; an immense force of union, resolving all oppositions, blending all into oneness. All the religious and mystical traditions have their tales about a FALL, about when humanity became divided from divinity, which is just a melodramatic way of saying once everything was one and then it was split and became two, and the two (yin-yang) gave birth to infinite diversity. This story is usually told gloomily, as if some great tragedy, which hooks us into one of the biggest traps of existence: victimization. Feeling oneself as a victim means holding a very low energetic vibration and is the very opposite of empowerment. The victim doesn’t heal, in fact, the victim doesn’t WANT to heal because they feel they’ve been fucked over, which on a deeper level they try and rationalize, believing they deserved or caused this to happen. I’ve been there and still go there. It ain’t the easiest thing to get over. And yet it is the easiest thing to get over (remember the contraries!). Especially since most religious traditions somewhere along the way got hijacked by rulers who happened to understand simple psychology quite well, they changed these stories as if humans did something wrong, as if HUMAN NATURE WAS SOMEHOW EVIL OR FLAWED which led to a couple millennia old, massive guilt complex all in the name of disempowering the masses so they’d be easier to manipulate and rule. And often in the past if one did not follow the creeds of the ruler well off with their head! Blessed times are these people (we are soooo blessed!).

“Don’t go to war with anger. It’s just a reminder to dance.”

The time for grieving is over. There is no sin. We are not evil, though we are neither good. We simply are. And really when you break it down, turn off the doomsday TVs, burn the terrorizing newspapers and the mobster media bullying you to believe, you realize that the majority of human action is damn well beautiful, virtuous and radiant. We just don’t pay attention because that deep down guilt and victim complex needs to be fed. If it ain’t, it dies, so it thrashes about, wrenching away our attention from more life-affirming activities to feed what is most debilitating in our personality. Ultimately, we are scared to change because we equate change we death. We fear death because we have a poor education about the subject, imbued most commonly with this erroneous notion that death means the end of something, when in fact, death means transformation. If the seed doesn’t die, how does the plant grow? This works on the same level with our habitual psychological patterns, each one being almost an identity unto themselves. When we try to put an end to something say like a cigarette addiction, we freak out because Darren the Smoker is being put to death and that brings up all sorts of desperate, histrionics. We fail to see that Darren the Smoker merely turns into Darren-the-I-can-breathe-again-and-be-healthy-dude. Anyone who has experienced indigenous cultures wakes to a very different and radical view of death. For the First Nations people of Canada, for example, those who die merely make a transition to the realm of spirit where we continue to exist, albeit in much more mysterious ways. For them, the dead and gone, the spirits of their ancestors, are still very much alive and through certain rituals and ceremonies, they communicate with them, garnering extraordinary wisdom from these encounters. When one of my favourite spiritual teachers, Stephen Jenkinson (‘The Grief Walker’) spoke at our school on the topic of initiation, he had many profound things to say on the subject which I’d like to share with you because I feel they shed a very important light. Stephen is a palliative care worker chiefly and he said that in all his years of helping people die that the main reason people fear death is not the mere prospect of annihilation as most of us thought but of not being remembered. He broached the ancestral honouring traditions of the North American indigenous to show us that they do not leave the dead dead but are constantly remembering, honouring, loving and communicating with them as if they have not expired at all but merely metamorphosed into something ethereal. We fear so terribly death because we know this is not the case at all in our traditions. The knell of death rings us empty, perhaps remembered on a few birthdays, or in some fleeting memories, but no more. No wonder we approach death with terror.

“After dancing there’s so much love, you even love the man that stole your wife!”

When I shake, the walls come down. All the emotional armouring I’ve welded to protect my body (my hard spine, stiff neck, and tense shoulders) begins to melt away by the great conflagration of love burning within me. As inhibitions fall, as my wildness gets wilder and I feel my animal nature pulsing powerfully and freely in my root chakra (the root chakra is the crown chakra for animals), I realize there is no longer any need for defenses; such over-protection as my armouring has entailed. I realize the world is beautiful, as beautiful as me, and this joy unbridling inside so ecstatically is proof we are born not to be free but FREE. As the lifeforce starts to move and sail through me, smashing through all blockages that have been erected in its path, all the stars within me are woven again into constellation. A heavenly harmony hums in my body as I restore the natural order of things. I begin to giggle like a little kid because I am a little kid. Always was and always am. How can a divine child ever grow up when their parents are eternal? I giggle with the big glee because I suddenly realize all the lies I’ve been told about the evil nature of humanity, the judicious, abusive Gods sending us to hell for stealing a carrot, or fucking before marriage, is not some monolithic dilemma I have to spend my life trying to transcend. Uh-uh. Rather I DESCEND, into body, where I am already in heaven, and I just let it all in, all the radiant BIG LOVE that is everything. And when it pours in, I pop. My spirit gets hard and I begin to make love to EVERYTHING. I cum light all over the place, and it gushes iridescent into outer space from an unlimited source. My heart gets pregnant with love and gives birth to a new me, the love me, the me that is not me, that is not separate from anything, undivided, synergetic, that sees no other, no good no evil, no us and them, just a giant pulsing oneness. POP: heaven is on earth, and my soul is their eternal wedding day.

“It’s like your head shoots off into outer space, and keeps flying all the way to the Beginning.” This BIG LOVE as Bradford calls it (realizing that ALL IS LOVE…I know, Bjork, u did tell me this a while ago…I was just not naïve enough!) is really AN ultimate for me as far as shaking goes but I dare not call it THE ultimate and risk curtailing my connection with the infinite in even more numinous encounters. There’s been loads of other extraordinary instances that have occurred that deserve due mention. The first shaking session I did was also during the time I was involved in working with the spiritual animals of the First Nations Tradition following the guidance of my teacher, Frank. According to their tradition, there are Seven Sacred Laws which the warrior is to live in alignment with and each law is animated symbolically by an animal, which embodies the characteristics of the law. Frank had offered to me the practice of working with one law for each month, and thereby working also with the animal of the law. This was back in June when I was working with the first and fundamental law, which is unconditional love, embodied by the most noble of birds, the eagle. So at the time, I was already experiencing altered states of consciousness during prayer, ‘imagineered’ meditation (thanks, Oren, for that alchemical word) and visualizations while I communicated to the spirit of the eagle. While shaking, I found my imagination quite unhinged (you don’t say!). True, my mind was a constant menace, trying to get me stuck to its sticky logic with such barbwire as “Man this is stupid…look at her, she’s totally faking that she’s a lion…why are we doing this? I’m not doing it right…I hope no one comes near me or touches me…”. The best way to get beyond mind I find is to PLUNGE it into body; to really feel the field of energy which your body most deeply is (and thank you, Eckhart Tolle, for initiating me into this powerful practice of what is called presence and body awareness). So, whenever mind showed up on the scene and tried to rationalize all the irrationality going around within and without, I would give all my attention to body and quickly find myself drenched in a much bigger mind. You see mind is not the head. Not at all. Mind is EVERYWHERE. EVERYTHING IS CONSCIOUS, just at different levels, and whatever those levels are well I dare not try and figure them out. Who cares anyhow? All I know now (because I feel it, such is my own validation) is that our mind is utterly unlimited, with the ability to stretch at any distance and connect with ANYTHING in the universe. It’s easy to try but demands a suspension of previous conditioning which ruthlessly tries to undermine the mystical mind (ever wonder why all the mind-altering, expanding drugs that used to be essential to shamanic cultures of old are illegal while the drugs that kill us and make us idiotic buffoons are legal?). Think of any object, such as a tree or a bird (helps if u can see them, but some have a more lucid imagination than others) and concentrate on connecting with that thing to your utmost ability. I find birds the easiest example because they are one of the few animals we revere still on a daily basis. So hold that bird with your mind and try and imagine doing what it does best: flying. I am quite certain with a bit of effort (or lack of) you will begin to ascertain some peculiar feelings as you empathize with the bird. The mind can feel into anything, I stress this again because this is a revolutionary notion that we all should begin to utilize because it can help us to reconnect with the shamanic heritage of our ancestors, who are waiting so patiently in our DNA to be activated. William Blake was not being desultory when he spoke of the imagination as the most divine part of the human being. The mind is much, much, MUCH more magical than we think. Alas, we are magical beings, interdimensional and non-locally relational. Oh so boooootiful! "Not altered states but enhanced states.”

At this particular instance, I had been deeply in my body for several minutes, so much so that I hadn’t had a NORMAL thought for quite sometime. I was at least 79.68 aware of myself and totally drenched in my body, which means I was, for lack of better word, tripping out; soaring in totally alternate states of consciousness and reality. Shaking head to toe, legs pumping to the African drums trembling from the big, juicy speakers, knees leaping to the level of my head, arms striking lightening, yelling, chanting, singing a psychedelic gospel without words; moaning, sighing, shouting, crying out, as great surges of electricity moaned through me in ecstatic jolts. FHDOFADSO940349KAFASLJFAS!?!!?!?! I was filled up with Holy Spirit, drunk on divine love. And then it came: EAGLE! Eagle was so much on my mind those days, my constant guide and companion that it was no surprise that it came to me then. BAM: I was an eagle, soaring high above. I laughed fervently as I closed my eyes to deepen this trip, recalling in the most passive way about Don Juan’s animal trips while on peyote described in Castaneda’s books. But there was no peyote! Only shaking! With eyes closed to inner-vision, a great, vast mountainous landscape appeared before my eyes. I sailed acrobatically in the blue sky, swooping down in high paced dives, arcing back in sudden, graceful loops at such a speed that my insides went nauseous as if they were actually experiencing great drops in altitude. It was so surreal! I actually found myself flying over some ancient temple ruins in what suddenly dawned upon me as the same landscape of a dream I had had months before; a dream that was one of the most powerful dreams of my life in fact! In the dream, I was down in the ruins among people I had never met but felt an ancient kinship with, as if we were all members of the same tribe or tribes that were closely knit. We were watching the sky in anticipation of a vision that was supposed to appear. Suddenly, two giant luminous crystals appeared high above, radiating a spectrum of wondrous colour as the sun’s rays pierced them. One crystal was in the shape of a phallus and the other a chalice. They moved in and out of each other as if in celestial coitus. Finally, they united firmly in utter connected unison whereupon they exploded in a great burst like a spectacular supernova. Shimmering coloured light sprayed down upon us in one of the most amazing visions I have ever received. It was a mighty vision of love of the highest kind as I was during that time months before vying and working with powerful intent to manifest universal love deep within me. When I awoke, my body vibrated with an energy I had never felt and yet felt so familiar; sacred paradox. It felt as though my finest fibers had mutated, that latent DNA had been awakened. And, that very dream had begun not down in the temple ruins but as a vision of me flying over the ruins and descending down to join the tribal reunion and here I was in this shaking vision, flying over the same dream scene that touched me so with love, now as an eagle, the embodiment of THE BIG LOVE!!!

“Don’t prohibit the other side.” Another favourite exercise I do while shaking is bringing my awareness to the various chakras in my body. Because shaking really shakes things up, the body’s sensitivity becomes extremely heightened, and the subtle energies that makeup our being at the deepest level become very palpable. The chakras being energy vortexes that nourish our lifeforce on vital levels (kind of like the organs of our energetic body) produce very strong sensations when the mind is placed there. When I placed my mind in my heart chakra, I instantaneously cooed loudly like a babe as heavy surges of electricity pulsed in my chest. I saw emerald green light sparkling all around me and could hear the sound of the chakra: a rapturous symphony of lissome, harmonic tones. I began to play with it: I imagined my whole body as a green emerald and as I did so, the chakra reacted, as if conjoining in my playfulness. It expanded, electricity unwound, spinning around me. When I placed my mind in my root chakra, I immediately fell to the ground and started pounding my fists on the floor. The animal reigned. I howled, growled and roared like a lucid Leo at the top of my lungs. I clawed at the floor, wanting nothing more but to hold close to Mother Earth’s core, which I knew then was the true root chakra of all creatures on Earth (gravity baby!). I pulled up on it, pulling ruby, red-blooded light up my feet which trembled with power. I went in and out of catatonic states as the great rays of Mother Earth’s energy mummified me with my essential energetic heritage. The power was so great I began to weep, half out of awe and half out of utter gratitude, knowing that this power being revealed and bestowed on me was my truest nature. My goddess…wild is the way to wisdom… At this point, I dared to open my crown chakra in the midst of Earthly communion to invite the Heavenly energies of Father Sky to mingle down below within me, within my heart, with those of Mother Earth…words fail me…all I recall is that I became so deeply conscious that I was connected to everything, from this floor I was standing upon, to Pluto; that there were strands upon strands of the finest energy that I was woven with, into in a great, unfathomably complex web of the most intricate design. I knew then how important, how powerful, how influential each thought, each action of my being could be on anything in the universe if I willed it to be. I died. I became the All. There was no more me, only we…and then something tickled me, as if to say, don’t stay here in this profound truth, play. Don’t get stuck. So I jumped up and I danced as I’ve never danced before. Someone sprayed water on me. I looked up and saw it was one of the participants who had a bowl of water in his hand and he was going around dousing the sweaty throng of spirit fire we all had become. I immediately fell to my knees before him and lamented ‘Baptize me, Goddess!!! Baptize me!!!’ He laughed and anointed me. Bradford was roaming around the room on his regular prowl, shaking with people, and striking them with lightening by touching them in vital points on their body, injecting them with his shamanic energy to pulse them ever more with spirit. Seeing me on my knees, totally popping at this point, he raced over and tackled me. We rolled around on the ground shaking, yelling screaming bellowing, as our energies coalesced, shaking our hands all over each other. My mind showed up a few times here to shed a final few layers of banal social conditioning: ‘Isn’t this a little crazy? Isn’t this kind of weird? Two men rolling around, hugging, moaning?!’ I laughed as these thoughts came up, letting them go along with all the other Hollywood scripts that had detoured my destiny for too long. Brad and I rolled around, shaking and shaking, getting entirely cooked in the frying pan of the Lord. Some of the people in the room encircled us and began pulsing energy toward us with outstretched hands. It was insane. It felt like my entire body was laughing. Brad got up and left me on the ground totally gone. He stood over me for a few moments, shaking above me, shaking energy from above down below into my writhing body on the ground as I screamed in total bliss. Marco snapped a great photo of this moment.

“Let’s get struck by lightening!!!”

Shaking medicine has made me bluntly aware that there was an entire part of my being I had not tapped since I was child. The primal me, the Dionysian me, no no not me…it was spirit, which I received once I had shaken myself of all the crowded conclusions and conceptions I’d made of reality that were alienating me from the great mystery. By shaking I shook myself empty so I could be filled with spirit. And when spirit poured in, I realized what real freedom is, how playful the divine is, how perverse, how hilarious, how powerful, how innocent, how amazing it is, and how contrary it is to everything I had formerly believed. As I walked the streets shortly afterwards, I became slightly somber realizing how trapped we become in our own minds; how we’d erected all these structures and semiotics to explain something that could never be explained and how we’d clogged it all up vying to define things. And yet, as I would write weeks later in a song I wrote called ‘Unknow’, everything is just flowing, knowing means you have to stop them. We were so afraid to let things just be, to be natural, that we’d made this massive exodus from the wild into this controlled urban setting, which of course had a certain place given that much of the motivation was to meet certain survival needs. I mean such things as shelter, and even heating systems to help us survive the bitter Canadian winter. But it had all gotten superfluous; so much more than necessary. It was as if when we started to use technology and our innovative minds to make our lives more comfortable, the motivations were more than just survival. It was an inherent distrust of nature that spurned an almost obsessive, fanatical drive to exist in closed off, completely human controlled worlds. And yet now, as the environment spins out of control and our holy economic temples collapse, one must wonder, is control the biggest façade of all? What was so wrong with the way things truly are? Now, I’m not one of those who believe we had it perfect in the past and need to revert totally back to the old ways. But I believe we need to stop and wonder for a moment at all those ancient, First People cultures that were largely holocausted by imperialists and wonder what wisdom they held and still hold that can help us build a new future that embraces the whole spectrum of human culture and experience, for we now have such means. Those peoples never got a chance to explain themselves really, before they were largely extinguished or relegated to reserves. It’s time we asked them about the ancient ways so we can come full circle. Shaking is one such example. Shaking has taught me so much and continues to do so each time I shake, which is never planned, but always on whim. It’s taught me that I need not to harden myself but soften myself to let spirit come in and get my natural self moving. It has taught me that I am essentially wild, untamed, and ever-defiant of logic or definition; something infinite, formless and interdependently arising. That there’s no more need for theorizing, just mobilizing the body into dance; dance of the most freeing kind, one that you give everything to until spirit comes in and does it for you. We have so much stuck within us and we need to just let it out. And we need love: we need to be loving and tolerant toward each other as all the guck pours out, holding a space of unconditional love and total acceptance so that all of our past traumas and pain can be released in utter abandon and allowed to flow again. As our tears fall, as the wounds bleed out their last gouts of blood, we watch what was frozen melt into liquid and be liquidated out of us. As the tears and blood fall, they are swept away along shining rivers, to be disassembled down to their barest ingredients: light, sweet light, flowing on into the distant stars. The time for grieving is over. It’s time to dance. It’s time to sing. It’s time to flow. It’s no longer about what we know, but what we feel, and about embracing the mystery that we are and all is. We are capacious evermore: we hold much more than we can ever imagine within. Aye, even the whole universe. Play. Be free. Be Big Love. Be a wild child. How can anyone ever grow old when our true parents are eternal?